Fast Fashion effects the environment

Question

A new UNEP video captures how fast fashion is a growing problem, creating waste while fuelling carbon emissions, and how combatting it is everyone’s responsibility. This article explains how fast fashion is ruining the environment with plastic polluting the oceans and exploiting underpaid workers. Fast fashion is a big business with selling cheap and fast orders 24/7 to consumers that still want more changes. Bigger companies have gone to many lengths donating huge amounts of money to stop the critical issues of Fast Fashion and its impact on the planet. Some are also continuously discussing solutions to producing the industry with less waste, less pollution, more reuse, and more recycling. This source is all for helping the environment thrive and the references backed up to help the strain of harmful impacts on our planet so this claim is true.

Answer 1

The article talks about how fast fashion is taking over and climate organizations around the globe are fighting the environmental repercussions of this issue. https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/environmental-costs-fast-fashion reads: "The Ellen Macarthur Foundation, a UNEP partner, has estimated that a truckload of abandoned textiles is dumped in landfill or incinerated every second. Meanwhile, it is estimated that people are buying 60 per cent more clothes and wearing them for half as long." This shows the radical implications of fast fashion and its impact on our environment. The article goes on to discuss other clothing retailers such as Patagonia, committing to environmental conservation. 

An article from Princeton about the affects of fast fashion reads: " The fashion industry consumes one tenth of all of the water used industrially to run factories and clean products. To put this into perspective, it takes 10,000 liters of water  to produce one kilogram of cotton or approximately 3,000 liters of water for one cotton shirt. Furthermore, textile dyeing requires toxic chemicals that subsequently end up in our oceans. Approximately 20% of the wastewater worldwide is attributed to this process, which accumulates over time. As many  factories moved overseas as stated previously, they may be in countries without strict environmental regulations, resulting in untreated water to enter the oceans. Regrettably, the wastewater created is extremely toxic and in many cases, cannot be treated to become safe again." This article discusses the environmental impacts of fast fashion, sharing a tone with the UNEP article.

Overall fast fashion is effecting the environment. Overfilling the landfills and with that, damaging the environment. As stated in the UNEP article, acting sooner rather than later is vital for the preservation of our environment.

Answer 2

Going into the claim about bigger companies moving to combat the issue. I believe we can see this as acknowledgement of the existence of the issue itself. From the article linked one of its sources is a pdf detailing plans to reshape the textile industry to reduce emissions. Which was supported by multiple large companies like Nike and HM. The pdf goes into how much faster textile production has gotten and the need to go greener, again with the acknowledgment from these larger companies gives proof to the claim.

https://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/a-new-textiles-economy

Answer 3

Fast fashion involves buying new cheap clothing, that at some point will be ended up thrown away, which encourages the process of buying more all over again; A quick introductory summary from the article. The article proceeds to mention some of the harmful causes fast fashion has on the environment such as pollution from the plastic fibers, wastewater, toxic dyes and so forth. The whole article goes to talk a bit more about the harmful effects on the environment and talks about how some industry’s are making important changes to help climate change. Such as the garment industry Patagonia transforming to a charitable trust with all its profit going towards climate change.

According to another article, within a decade there will be a 50% increase in greenhouse gas emissions. One of the causes is the usage of Viscose. Viscose was introduced in 1890 as a cheaper alternative to cotton. The production of Viscose is harmful as companies use chemicals and have an unethical resourcing for the material. Not only is the production of Viscose harmful to the environment but it is also harmful to the workers that are being exposed to it, as it can lead to health side effects. To add on, Viscose is just one of the many harmful causes on the environment. 

https://psci.princeton.edu/tips/2020/7/20/the-impact-of-fast-fashion-on-the-environment